The echo of these triumphs of insubordination and murder was felt every where in the mutinous conduct of the troops, the disobedience of the national guard, and the risings of the populace; whilst at Paris they feted the Swiss of Chateauvieux, the mob of Marseilles demanded with much violence that the Swiss regiment of Ernst should be expelled from the garrison at Aix, under pretext that they favoured the aristocracy, and that the security of Provence was thereby menaced.  On the refusal of this regiment to quit the city, the Marseillaise marched upon Aix as the Parisians had marched upon Versailles in the days of October.  They by violence compelled the national guard to accompany them, who had been destined to repress them; they surrounded the regiment of Ernst with cannon, made them lay down their arms, and shamefully drove them before sedition.  The national guard, a force essentially revolutionary, because it participates, like the people, in the opinions, feelings, and passions, which, as a civic guard, it ought to repress, followed in every direction, from weakness or example, the fickle impressions of the mob.  How could men, just leaving clubs, where they had been listening to, applauding, and frequently exciting sedition in patriotic discourses,—­how could they, changing their feelings and part at the door of popular societies, take arms against the seditious?  Thus they remained spectators, when they were not accomplices, of insurrections.  The scarcity of colonial produce, the dearness of grain, the rigour of a hard winter, all contributed to disturb the people:  the agitators turned all these misfortunes of the times into accusations and grounds of hatred against royalty.

II.

The government, powerless and disarmed, was rendered responsible for the severities of nature.  Secret emissaries, armed bands, went amongst the towns and cities where markets were held, and there disseminated the most alarming reports, provoking the people to tax grain and flour, stigmatising the corn-dealers as monopolists—­the perfidious charge of monopoly being a sure sentence of death.  The fear of being accused of starving the people checked every speculation of business, and tended much more than actual want to the dearth of the markets.  Nothing is so scarce as a commodity which is concealed.  The corn-stores were crimes in the eyes of consumers of bread.  The Maire of Etampes, Simoneau, an honest man, and an intrepid magistrate, was one victim sacrificed to the people’s suspicions.  Etampes was one of the great markets that supplied Paris.  It was therefore necessary for it to preserve the liberty of commerce and the supply of flour.  A mob, composed of men and women of the adjacent villages, assembling at the sound of the tocsin, marched upon the city one market-day, preceded by drums, armed with guns and pitchforks, in order to carry off the grain by force from the proprietors, divide it amongst themselves, and to exterminate, as they declared, the monopolists, amongst whom sinister voices mingled in low tones the name of Simoneau.  The national guard disappeared, a detachment of one hundred men of the eighteenth regiment of cavalry were at Etampes, and the sole force at the Maire’s disposal.